So i'm obsessed with The Long Goodbye right now

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spoilers............ spoilers..........

i don't think a film ever made me so surprised so many times over in it's final minutes.the guy ISN'T dead! "and i lost my cat", bang! the gun goes off, the girl suddenly re-appears, he's going to get run over again!!? but NO! he dances down the street! and then the '...Hollywood' song comes up! and he dances with an old lady! 2 different homgaes to Third Man in mere minutes, 2 fingers to 'Hollywood'...man. i almost had to pick my teeth back up off the floor.

The book is very different from the Altman movie -- Chandler takes Marlowe's old-school morality quite seriously, Altman makes fun of it. Both are excellent, but if you're expecting a straight film adaptation of the novel, as a lot of the original audience was, you might be disappointed. On the other hand, if you like the dark satire of the movie, you might think the book is kind of stuffy.

Contemporaneous reviews otm. So Altman wanted to rip the heart out of the book as some kind of comment on 70s hollywood? idgi. Everything about the film seems deliberately obtuse, right down to the forgettable song trying to become unforgettable by 'incidentally' occurring in every other scene.

also can anyone confirm that the real-estate woman called Mrs Tewkesbury near the end of the film is not played by the Nashville screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury? I think per the iMdB she is an actress named Sybil Scotford.

I watched that earlier this year too. Really strange movie, a little overly mannered but kind of moving. Like The Graduate if Benjamin had been an awkward, burned-out philanderer rather than an anxious college student.

Yeah I found it pretty affecting, I was surprised it actually worked as a movie since the idea of adapting it felt so doomed. I love Cheever and in a way it made me like the short story even more, which is good.

It also had a nice haziness to it, I guess for a story that's about an alcoholic it really made me want to be by a pool in the sun drinking a cocktail.

I certainly don't share that belief, whatever its sphincter-stenosis level, nor have I read the book. Nor am I more interested in Marlowe than Altman. I just don't find the revisionist noir a particularly interesting concept.

been going round my head since I saw it at the cinema, such a supremely comfortable film. made a to-watch list of films noted as similar here and in the inherent vice/big lebowski thread, would be particularly curious if anyone can think of a film with a similar energy and agreeably dishevelled protaganist who isn't a white american guy